'We cleaned up her act'

For six weeks in 1998, star turned town on head

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey shows her joy after a jury ruled in her favor in Amarillo on Feb. 26, 1998. Winfrey had been sued by Texas cattlemen for allegedly defaming the beef industry in one of her shows.

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Paul Engler doesn't even take a breath when asked if he would sue Oprah Winfrey again.

"Absolutely," he said. "I wouldn't hesitate 35 seconds."

Engler, the prominent Amarillo cattleman and chairman of the board of Cactus Feeders, has no doubt that suing the most famous woman in the world was the right call.

No matter that he lost. No matter that Winfrey swept into Amarillo with hurricane-force winds and focused the nation's attention on the city for a six-week period. No matter that the lawsuit only burnished Winfrey's reputation.

Thirteen years later, Engler is still fully convinced that Winfrey, who is shutting down her syndicated talk show Wednesday after 25 years, violated a Texas law by, in his words, "knowingly making a false statement that disparaged a perishable food product."

"Her show ... was so ridiculous and so inaccurate and almost blasphemous," Engler said.

'Stopped me cold'

Let's back up.

On April 16, 1996, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" aired an episode titled "Dangerous Foods." During the episode, Winfrey interviewed a cattleman-turned-vegetarian activist, Howard Lyman, who made the provocative claim that mad cow disease could make AIDS look like the common cold.

That prompted Winfrey to utter this infamous statement: "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger."

A representative of the cattle industry rebutted Lyman's claims on the show, but his air time was significantly less than that of Lyman.

"We all understand that you have to edit for time, but when they edited it down, the national beef guy ended up talking 37 seconds and Howard Lyman talked 14 to 15 minutes," said Kevin Isern, one of Engler's attorneys in the case.

A few weeks after the show aired, Engler was meeting with another lawyer in Isern's office.

"He was upset about the show ... and wondered if something could be done about it," Isern recalled. "I had gone to a state bar continuing-education course and learned about five or six months before that about this new perishable food law.

"I said, 'Paul, she can't do that in Texas.'"

That law was the False Disparagement of Perishable Food Products Act, enacted in September 1995. Engler et al. vs. Oprah et al. was the first time the law was tested. It was also the last time, according to several attorneys who argued the case.

"To my knowledge, no one has used that statute again, and I'm pretty certain that I would have heard," said Charles B. "Chip" Babcock, Winfrey's attorney.

"I don't know any cases under it in all those years since then," said David Mullin, who represented Texas Beef Group.

Engler and Cactus Feeders were joined by several other area plaintiffs, including Texas Beef, Perryton Feeders Inc., Bravo Cattle Co. and more. They filed suit May 23, 1996, against Winfrey; her production company, Harpo Productions Inc.; and Lyman. Thus began a two-year battle of dueling depositions and motions to dismiss.

In all, the cattlemen sought more than $10 million in damages they said were caused by sales losses they attributed to Winfrey's show.

"I looked at it and didn't think it was much of a lawsuit," Babcock said. "... Neither she nor her guest said anything that I thought was terribly defamatory and certainly not defamatory about the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs weren't even mentioned on the show."

Amarillo on trial

As the trial drew nearer, U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson issued a broad gag order over all parties in the case, and around the same time, Amarillo Chamber of Commerce President Gary Molberg issued a memo to his staff - later retracted - instructing them not to provide any "red carpet rollouts" for Winfrey and saying that the chamber "supports the cattle feeder industry because they are a vital part of Amarillo."

Babcock said he never thought, though, that Amarillo would be a hostile battleground.

"I had been to Amarillo many times and had tried cases in Amarillo. I privately thought that Amarillo was not as good a venue for the plaintiffs as they thought," Babcock said. "... They out and out told me that all they had to do was roll the ball out in the court and they were going to win because the community was so pro-beef. I never thought that."

Winfrey wasn't as certain.

"I felt like I was walking into enemy territory and feared for my life, literally," she told the Amarillo Globe-News in an exclusive interview a day after the trial ended in 1998. Winfrey did not respond to an interview request for this story.

As the trial began, national attention grew. The line of satellite trucks in front of the Federal Courts Building downtown was compared more than once to the legions of journalists covering the then-recent O.J. Simpson murder trial. All of the major networks and CNN had correspondents in Amarillo for part or all of the trial, and entertainment media such as People Magazine and "Entertainment Tonight" followed the proceedings closely.

The celebrity factor

Winfrey's level of fame and influence, even then, was astounding.

Celebrity spottings had the town buzzing for weeks, documented in the Globe-News' popular column "Eye on Oprah."

"I was constantly, constantly working on that," said writer Shanna Foust-Peeples, who left the Globe-News in 2002. "People were always calling me, people were always talking to me."

And certainly, Winfrey's fame reached into the courtroom.

"I remember a lady during voir dire who started crying - crying! - about Oprah," Mullin said. "I couldn't even conceive of that. ... That's a failing on my part because I think if I'd connected better, I would have understood I was up against something so big."

Judge Robinson worked hard to keep the mayhem out of her courtroom, limiting the number of reporters who cover the case in person and holding only about 60 seats aside for the general public on a first-come, first-serve basis.

"She tried real hard to keep it from being a circus, but what could she do?" Mullen said. "People surrounded the courthouse. I wasn't used to walking out of my office or the courthouse and having a mic popped in my face."

Ellen Robertson Green, now the chief marketing and communications director at Amarillo College and a recently elected Amarillo city commissioner, covered the trial for AC's public-broadcast station, KACV-TV.

"I still drive past the courthouse and remember the live trucks all lined up, all the tents that the major networks used," Green said.

So does Sandra Dunn, the transgender candidate for mayor in the recent municipal election. At the time of the Winfrey trial, Dunn was still living as Fred Dunaway and served on the jury.

"There were four guys on the jury. Well, now three, under the circumstances," Dunn said, laughing.

"We would always look down and watch all the news media (in front of the courthouse)," Dunn said. "... We got a little enjoyment out of watching that."

The case winds on

The trial ended up lasting almost 27 days over six weeks, during which Winfrey filmed her talk show at Amarillo Little Theatre. Winfrey took the witness stand for three days of questions.

"Before testifying, she prayed in front of the jury," Mullin recalled. "She said she had never committed a malicious act, even as a child. I sat there and thought, 'I don't think there's anybody who could say that. Not even Mother Teresa could say that.'"

A pivotal ruling from Robinson about a week before both sides closed their cases changed the scope of the trial dramatically. Robinson ruled that the jury would only decide whether Winfrey and the other defendants violated standard business-disparagement laws, discarding the plaintiffs' arguments that they broke Texas' so-called "veggie libel" law.

"That shot us down," Engler said. "... We wouldn't have even filed the case if it hadn't been for that law."

Mullin isn't sure that they would have won the case even under the perishable food law.

"I don't think there's one thing that the judge did and as much as I like Chip Babcock ... there's not one thing that (he) could have done to change the trial," Mullin said. "I think it was Oprah.

"... I thought back to that comment that she basically had never done anything wrong in her life. To tell you the truth, I think the jury believed her, and if the jury believed that she had never done anything malicious in her life, they couldn't rule against her."

Verdict

After just 51/2 hours over two days, the jury returned its verdict shortly before 11 a.m. Feb. 26, 1998: Winfrey, Harpo and Lyman did not say or air false and disparaging statements about the cattle owned by the plaintiffs.

Winfrey struggled to hold back a widening grin before the jurors filed out of the courtroom. She later buried her face in her hands and cried, but she was jubilant minutes later when she gave an impromptu news conference on the steps of the courthouse.

"Free speech not only lives, it rocks!" she said, pumping her right fist in the air.

Dunn said the jury thought Lyman had "an agenda. No doubt, he had an agenda. Many of us wished that if he were separated from the other two (defendants), we would have found him guilty, but not the other two.

"It was her words - 'I won't eat another burger' - it wasn't her saying, 'You shouldn't eat another burger or another steak.'"

A day after the verdict was delivered, Dunn and the other jurors joined Winfrey for lunch at the Adaberry Inn, which Winfrey and her crew had commandeered during her Amarillo stay.

"A couple of the ladies (on the jury) had approached her and said they would love to meet her," Dunn said. "... The jury approached her, the judge said she couldn't approach us.

"... She was very inquisitive. She worked the crowd. Part of it was that she had just spent six weeks with us and wanted to know what we were thinking," Dunn said. "... Also, part of it was her background in journalism. You could tell that was coming out."

Though rumor had it that Winfrey offered the jurors tickets to her show at that lunch, Dunn doesn't recall it.

"A few of us (during the trial) thought that depending on how it went, we'd get half a beef or tickets to her show, but as far as I know, there was no mention of that."

The verdict was later upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Aftermath

Winfrey packed up and left town within two days. As far as anyone knows, she hasn't returned.

In fact, she's had little to say about the experience in the 13 years since.

She gave one interview to the Amarillo Globe-News and one interview shortly afterward to ABC's Diane Sawyer.

After the trial, Winfrey did send a letter to the Amarillo Convention and Visitor Council, a branch of the Chamber of Commerce.

"I know more than once, she spoke very highly of Amarillo. I think we opened our arms and welcomed her here ... and through the CVC, we received a very nice letter thanking us for our hospitality," Molberg said, declining to discuss the controversial "red carpet" memo.

A 2004 Winfrey biography by Helen S. Garson says that Winfrey "does not discuss beef on her show or in her magazine anymore."

"She has said publicly that this trial ... changed her for the better," Babcock said. "Being a trial lawyer, I see that in people all the time."

The plaintiffs agree that Winfrey changed after the trial.

"I think we did some good," Engler said. "After that, I think they were more careful about getting good experts and people that had good reputations and so forth that could make statements on an authoritative basis.

"I think we cleaned up her act."

Babcock, who continues to represent Winfrey, argues that the experience made her star shine even brighter.

"I think in terms of the general public, they saw a woman going into what was perceived to be a hostile environment and standing up for a precious and sacred right in our society, the right for free speech, and I think that greatly enhanced her reputation," he said.

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“Dogs' lives are too short. Their only fault, really." ~Agnes Sligh Turnbull “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.” -Margaret Thatcher

It was pure racism. All black people fear for their lives in an area as white and conservative as Amarillo, right? Imagine if Rush was on trial in Compton or Harlem and he stated he feared for his life.

Oprah made Engler looked like a fool. Molberg almost lost his job and Amarillo did roll out the welcome mat in a big way. Seems to be some revisionist recall here. But nice try Paul. Please sue Letterman, or Leno. Amarillo could use the money.

Yucca, that was funny!! Paul Engler and the others should be ashamed for embarrassing Amarillo the way they did!! When we travel, we are frequently asked about that and I just explainthat there are stupid people everywhere.....

Stillnat, Bobby Kennedy was killed in California by a Muslim extremist and I'm not afraid to go there....oh, yes I am....I can't conceal carry there. I have to lock my dangerous weapon in the trunk unloaded and take my chances at the roadside parks where wackos accost travelers. I think I prefer Amarillo.

Wow this guy needs to move on and yes it must have been a slow day at the globe seriously as someone from amarillo and telling people what a great place this is , all this event did was put amarillo on the map as unfriendly , lack of diversity town , and typical texas town ....amarillo needs work but the newspaper and mr Engler needs to take proud in his town and not bring it down please dont be a sterotype ...its a shame that the newspaper feeds into , wow cant tell you how many times we have been told how hard it must have been to be raised in such a town like amarillo,.....Well like said move on and get over it and shame on you Amarillo Globe news what a diservice you did for your community by giving him space and interview time ....get a real story that will make a difference...

I know that Bobby was killed in California, but I guess it didn't have the same effect on the nation has having the actual president assassinated. I could be wrong but in talking to people around the country that is what I have encountered.

I know that Bobby was killed in California, but I guess it didn't have the same effect on the nation has having the actual president assassinated. I could be wrong but in talking to people around the country that is what I have encountered.

I am from Amarillo , lived in Chicago during the time O was in Amarillo and was in Amarillo working for a few days while she was in down.
I think Amarillo treated her pretty well and she did a lot for the town than.

As for being afraid well she is from Chicago and people in Chicago think West Texas is still the old west. Cant blame her.

"Paul Engler and the others should be ashamed for embarrassing Amarillo the way they did!! When we travel, we are frequently asked about that and I just explainthat there are stupid people everywhere....."

Really, REALLY, I'm sure that I travel way more than you and no one, anywhere has ever ask me about this. Nobody even remembered any of this until the article came out today.

I'm surprised Oprah was sued since she is soooooooo nice to whites on her show. Whatever she presents, it's all about whites and blacks. Forget about hispanics ,asians, native americans and other minorities.I am not saying she has never had them in her shows but the majority of the times it's all 'blanco y negro".
Amarillo treated her very well because she is one rich woman and like they say, money talks. I am sure Amarillo made a lot of money during her stay .
I never watch her show anymore and am glad it'll be over with soon. I will not miss it.